Demands that internet speech be controlled or eliminated reflect that American oligarchy can’t accept that non-oligarch Americans can share information outside that approved by the establishment-wsws, Andre Damon

In an editorial published earlier this month, the Washington Post demanded that Facebook “step up to the plate and call lies out when it sees them.” (“Free speech doesn’t mean Facebook must run dishonest ads”).

In an op-ed published by the New York Times earlier this week, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu argued that Facebook should stop “the spread of misinformation” in following Twitter in banning political advertisements. Facebook, he wrote, is “now the outlier” for “insisting on accepting not only political advertising, but even deliberate and malicious lies if they are in the form of paid advertisements.” (“Facebook isn’t just allowing lies, it’s prioritizing them”)

Last month, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, demanded that Facebook “take down lies.” She was joined by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who condemned Facebook for allowing “politicians” to make “untruthful statements.”

While couched in demagogic language accusing Facebook of “profiting” off of “disinformation,” the Democrats’ campaign for internet censorship is devoid of any progressive content. It is a pretext for censorship.

The “authoritative” media and politicians,both Democrats and Republicans, lie constantly. They lie about the underlying motivations for their actions, dressing up imperialist crimes in the language of “human rights” or claims about “weapons of mass destruction.” All of bourgeois politics is, in fact, “deliberately misleading content,” in one form or another.

If someone disputes the claims of Clinton, et. al. that WikiLeaks is spreading “fake news,” are they to be censored? Is the position that Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, broadly believed in the American population but condemned by the Times as a “conspiracy theory,” to be branded as “disinformation”?